Everything You Need to Know about Bra Fit if You’re Losing Weight!

If you’re working hard and losing weight, you may notice that your bras no longer fit quite right. Maybe it’s time to treat yourself to some new clothes now that you’ve dropped a few sizes – including some new bras! Don’t fall into the most common bra fit trap when losing weight: a D is not a D across the board, so when you lose weight, you may find your bra cup size changing!

Cup Sizes are Not Universal
Most women don’t realize it, but bra cup sizes are not the same across all the band sizes. A 32D, for example, isn’t the same cup size as a 38D. Bra manufacturers scale their cup sizes according to the band size, so a 38D, in proportion, is actually bigger than a 32D if you’re just comparing cup volume. This means that if you’re losing weight or changing bra sizes, you may not just need to change your band size – it may mean you need to change your cup size!

Common Weight-Loss Bra Size Scenarios
Surprisingly, there haven’t been a lot of studies about this, so we only have anecdotal evidence to go on to figure out what’s “common” when women lose weight. It seems like the most common change to bra size when women lose weight is that the band size goes down, but the cup size actually goes up! This means that while you might have been a 38D, when you go down to a 34, you may actually be an E or an F. This is because the volume of the cup scales down as the band size scales down, and women seem to lose inches around their rib cage faster than they lose volume in the breasts. So your breasts may have the same volume as when you were a 38D, but in a size 34 band, you may actually need an E or an F cup to get the same volume.

If you lose a lot of weight, you may go down in relative cup size, too. You do lose weight in your breasts as you lose weight all over your body, but women don’t always lose weight at the same rate in the same places, so there’s no uniform rule for how that works. So instead of going down to a 34F, if you drop all the way down to a 32 from a 40 or 42, you may still be a D – because you may have lost enough volume in your breasts to scale your cup size – i.e. you may not gain in cup size as you go down if you’ve had a big weight loss.

Check Your Fit as You Lose Weight
The ultimate lesson from all these variables is that you need to re-check your bra fit after you lose weight to make sure you’re buying the right bra size. Don’t just assume you’ll stay the same cup size in a smaller band – chances are good that you won’t! Follow our fit guidelines to measure yourself and determine the appropriate bra size, and don’t forget to check our bra cup size comparison to select the appropriate cup and band size based on the brand you’re buying!